Multi-Word Verbs in Senior High School Academic Papers: A Corpus-Based Study

Multi-Word Verbs in Senior High School Academic Papers: A Corpus- Based Study Ma. Angelica A. Gumangan Shirley N. Dita De La Salle University De La Salle University ma_angelica_gumangan@dlsu.edu.ph shirley.dita@dlsu.edu.ph Abstract A multi-word verb refers to a verb-particle- preposition combination which acts a single lexical and syntactic unit (Quirk et al., 1985). Graduate students from a private university compiled a learner corpus composed of academic papers of senior high school students. Using this 1.5-million-word learner corpus, this study looks into the frequency of the most used MWVs and the innovations in the use thereof. According to Quirk et al., phrasal verbs (find out, come along), prepositional verbs (look at, refer to), and phrasal-prepositional verbs (get back to, keep up with). Using the list curated by Ella (2019), this study investigated 66 MWVs in their finite and non-finite forms using AntConc 3.5. Results indicate that 57 MWVs were existent in the corpus. Also, 711 phrasal verbs (finite- 383 and non-finite- 328), 3836 prepositional verbs (finite- 2628 and non-finite- 1208), and 194 phrasal-prepositional verbs (finite- 116 and non-finite- 78) were discovered. The ten most frequently used MWVs are base on, refer to, serve as, contribute to, deal with, find out, look for, give NP to, make up, and come up with. As for the innovations, base from, base in, come on, come up to, deal with, make up, make up to, result to, set up, and spend in were present in the learner corpus. To sum, Filipino students are familiar with prepositional and phrasal verbs, but they avoid phrasal-prepositional verbs due to the complexity of the combination. 1 Introduction Multi-Word Verbs (MWVs from this point onwards) are considered to be one of the toughest lexical items to learn and master among ESL and EFL students (Siyanova & Schmitt, 2007). They seem problematic because of their complicated nature. If learners are not cognizant of their form, then they would have a difficult time deciphering their meaning and function since most of the items do not have a translation or equivalent in their first language (Ella & Dita, 2017). According to Quirk et al.(1985), MWVs are structures that behave as a single unit. Examples are deal with, carry out, look forward to. They are a combination of verbs and are more present in conversations than in written form (Biber, Johansson, Leech, Conrad, & Finegan, 1999; Siyanova & Schmitt, 2007). Perhaps the simplest definition of MWVs is that they consist of two or more words which work together (Siyanova & Schmitt, 2007). That being said, it would be difficult and challenging to realize the said construction as a single semantic and grammatical unit. It must be noted that long before Quirk et al. (1985) has laid a solid foundation on MWVS in their book, A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language, several scholars have been researching on this grammatical item. They have also been using different terminologies for MWVs- phrasal verb (Bolinger, 1971), group verb (Sweet, 1892), compound verb (Hook, 1974), verb-particle combination (Fraser, 1976), separable …

Content truncated to 500 words